I find the reporting on this story to be lacking. They present no proof of any DU as a cause for the girls illness, there’re not even a doctor that said that, just a father struggling to help his daughter. And the other claim of Iraqis progress prior to 91, well most of the dictatorships makes these claims. You can hear the same from castro’s Cuba, but we Cubans know it’s all hype, and no where near the truth of the matter. So why should we just believe anything coming out of saddams Iraq?

liberate iraq - 01/02/2007 14:52:34

this is so sad, it is ridcolous how doctors won’t admit patients for their own selfish reasons. oh yeah, madtom is just racist neo-con that cant wait to turn iraq into a huge glass field.

Lesley - 01/02/2007 16:35:35

Thats awful. Do you have any more details of what this illness is caused by? Is it the depleted uranium shells? Or chemical weapons?

Oh I think it’s much more likely to be the new bio weapons being deployed to Iraq. the Cancer cluster shell.

It’s deployed from GPS satellite that orbit the planet. They use a new micro ray targeting so that the individual bomblets hit children only. That way there wont be any more Iraqis in the future, and we can turn the whole place into a giant kitty litter factory…

Lesley - 01/03/2007 13:41:56

madtom, shut the hell up. The only way you’d make people laugh was if you used laughing gas instead of cancer clusters.

But why should I, there is no proof what so ever that cancer rates in Iraq have risen above the norm world wide. Sure the rates might be rising, but the rise is not out of line with cancer rate all over the world.

How would you explain that, when a place with no DU has the same rates as a place like Iraq with DU?

All I was asking for was something to back up the empty claims being made. Is that too much to ask for?

Don - 01/03/2007 20:34:49

First!

Citizen of the earth - 01/04/2007 04:35:33

DU is a toxic waste just like fluoride that they put in our water to make us docile. It is obvious that DU has been causing a lot of deaths and suffering not only in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon but in the USA as well when DoD’s paper DOES admit its toxicity and horrible effects.

DU’s super fine particles go underground and contaminate their water, crops, as well as flying over this planet and could reach you madtom, when its hald life is 4.5 billion years.

Lesley - 01/04/2007 04:44:52

madtom -Not out of line with the rest of the world? In places in Iraq, childhood cancers rose by 300% after the first gulf war!
I myself asked for more details.That is a perfectly reasonable request.Joking about a giant litter factory is not.

Clinical observations on cancer
The health professionals interviewed in Gjakove/Djakova, Gjilan/Gnjilane, Peje/Pec, Prishine/Prishtina, Prizren and the southern part of Mitrovica/Mitrovica had not observed any changes in cases of consultations in their service. In some places the director of the hospital has instructed the staff to pay particular attention to diseases suspected to be related to the armed conflict.

The point that is often missed is that that the half-life of a radioactive substance is misleading as to its danger to health.

There are two reasons.

One is that it is an entirely different ball game when a radioactive substance is lodged inside the body.

The reason is that most of this shit emits alpha and beta radiation which do not travel far in air — however, in the body, they don’t need to travel far to whack a living cell.

The other point is that radioactive substances cascade when they decay — that is the result of a long lived isotope can be very short lived.

Also, DU is not a complete description — it depends on what it was “depleted” from — if it is a waste product of weapons production, then it is certainly contaminated with some real bad shit.

Even if DU is “clean” U238, the problem of using it in munitions remains — under ordinary battle conditions, about ½ of the metal will be aerosolized, that is rendered into a form which is carried by the wind and, by rain, washed into aquifiers

Bob Wilkinson - 01/04/2007 16:43:17

For some background on DU check out this rare interview with Professor Asaf Durakovic, MD, Ph.D. plus do a google on his name and read the extensive articles etc. about Professor Durakovic and his work:

Dr. Asaf Durakovic served at the rank of colonel in the US Army Medical Corps during 90-91 “Operation Desert Shield” and upon return to the US was appointed chief of nuclear medicine at the Dept of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Wilmington, Delaware. He was fired when he refused to quit testing returning soldiers for DU. He worked as a clinical professor of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at Georgetown University in DC. He had to leave the country and move to Toronto after death threats to him and his family and break-ins at his house. Who wanted to silence him and his work and why?

The military prefers DU in their munitions because of its penetrating power after traveling long distances. It also makes great armor plating for tanks etc. to protect them from enemy fire. It is also a way to recycle more than a million tons of nuclear waste, mostly U-238 but the occasional U-235 gets into the waste piles. The government is very concerned about the liability from the use of DU therefore they send madtoms out to quell the potential uprising.

Steve Robinson, Executive Director, National Gulf War Resource Center. They monitor the current status of scientific studies.:

Said that they did not know if DU was a cause of the GWS.

Dr. Asaf Durakovic, nuclear scientist and former Chief of the Nuclear Sciences Division at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute. He is currently the Medical Director of the Uranium Medical Research Center, an independent non-profit institute which studies the effects of Uranium contamination.

Sounds like a disgruntled employee.
Claims to have been the only government nuclear medicine scientist working in the state of Delaware in 1998?? [amazing that Goodman would not have followed up on that claim]
Claims 60% of their patients in his private clinics contained DU in their body.
Talks about the challenges of the aftereffects of attacks with nuclear weapons, not DU.
Talks about Uranium isotopes in Afghanistan, not DU.
Dangers of aerosols DU.
Found high levels of Uranium Isotopes in the samples. said that the levels found astounded the scientific community and that science did not have an explanation.
Never made any connection to DU from munitions.
End of Show

No explanation for the results found by the WHO in Kosovo linked above. Much hype and many buzz words, and talk about a disaster looming, but one which had not yet materialized. I hope everyone follows the link and listens to the report for themselves. I hope this was not the best you had.

Chris {polak in australia} - 01/12/2007 09:38:16

Madtom, you sound like you must be israeli………. am i right? because anybody with half a brain knows that depleated uranium is bad yet hundreds of tons were used in iraq…….. mind you they only went after centres of civilization when the US attacked so i wonder where the DU is??? in the dessert??? hahahah
1.DU even when vapourised is heavy thus settles in the nearby area. 2.American leadership has total contempt for any human life including their own peoples. 3.America is the only country that warns of ignorant governments using WMD’s yet is the only government to push DU weapons and has dropped nukes on civilians intentionally before!!!…… funny how the US doesnt have to pay war reparations to japan yet the germans have to to the JEWS!!!

farhad - 01/19/2007 02:12:10

>But why should I, there is no proof what so ever that cancer rates in Iraq have risen above the norm world wide.
There are many studies that shows a 10 fold increase of cancer patients in Iraq and the Balkans, but I don’t think you really care for them do you?

Sure, the same way, the GWS was denied for years and the Madelain Olbridght (spelling?) said that the UN report that 500 000 Iraqi children who died because of the sanctions was “justified” to fight Saddam.

Madtom,
denying the reality is always easy, you can always find voices to question them. But the suffering of the people does not go away.

John Pilger’s documentary, “Killing the children ofIraq” is an excellent look back at our arrogance toward the suffering of the Iraqis. During Saddam and it is going on much much stronger these days, since wast majority of the doctors in Iraq has been forces to leave the country.

The fact stays the same, no matter if you deny it or not. People will die, and we can happily live our life in denial.

[…] Alive in Baghdad has produced several shows examining these difficulties. Although primarily focused on the potential impact of depleted uranium, particularly in children, we have also interviewed a doctor, medical students, and a father whose daughter has a strange and unexplained illness. […]